Queranaran (The World)
| Auntimoanian Avantimanisc Spreihhô | |
| Spoken in: | Empire of Auntimoanye |
| Timeline/Universe: | The World |
| Total speakers: | More than 15 million |
| Genealogical classification: | Daine |
| Basic word order: | OSV |
| Morphological type: | inflecting |
| Created by: | |
| Elemtilas | late 1980s, revisited in 2010s |
Querannaran is the language spoken by very many Daine of the Eastlands of The World. Here, we'll take a look at a snippet of spoken Querannaran that appears as part of a humorous Turgun story. One thing even Daine and Men share in common is this basic dynamic of female-male relations:
eiyem an ossetiyas : amanou racasawatimnemiye damoman sjaereerenyest : nico : manadiradiralyost Here the girl is asking her fellow: "I know this already, but I'm asking anyway : my new raca, do you think it's pretty, love? It's so very blue!"
eiyem an ossetiyas: evidential markers, the first meaning "surety" the second indicating insecurity of information; putting the two together makes for an idiomatic expression seeking confirmation of opinion. (Reverse the order and the meaning changes to something like "I'm not entirely sure, but I'm going to go ahead anyway."
amanou: 1st singular feminine possessive particle
raca-sawati-menem-iye: a raca is an animal hide or woven cloth, generally wrapped around the waist; raca-sawati can mean an article of clothing, and in specific a nicely tailored sarong / kilt / kirtle-like piece of clothing; menem is an infixed adjective meaning "new"; racasawati is an -i class noun and -ye is the nominative singular of that class
damo-man: damo (check notes!); while man is the 2nd singular masculine pronoun
sja-ere-erenye-st: sja- is a preverb meaning "from within towards without" / "from inside out"; erenyest is the verb "to be beautiful" while -st is the aspect marker. Reduplication of verb roots yields a kind of moderate emphasis best rendered by "truly" or "so very"
nico: can mean 'male Daine' and can also serve as a term of affection or even a proper name (Nico & Enca are the names of very ancient culture heroes among the Daine of many lands)
mana-dira-diralyost: mana is a preverb meaning "within the entire extent" / "thoroughly"; diralyost is the verb meaning "to be blue", again reduplicated to denote moderate emphasis.
ha : manaerenyest : eiyem : sjahuuryost: enca And he responds: "Sure, tis pretty. But I'm sure it's grey, love."
ha: a discourse particle indicative of divided attention; an affirmative marker, but not really a definitive one. It is often used where a polite agreement might be in order or where the opinion sought might not be coming from the surest of sources.
mana-erenyest: mana preverb as above; erenyest verb as above, noting that it is not here reduplicated, indicating a less than enthused agreement
eiyem: evidential marker as above, indicating surety
sja-huuryost: sja- preverb as above; huuryost verbal adjective meaning "to be grey"
enca: can mean 'female Daine', or be a term of affection or a personal name
liyieram : sjadiradiralyost : nico She says: "No, let's make this clear: it is indeed very blue, love!" And he replies: ya : eiyem : nahuuryo ateh tinnengast which means "Myeh. Anyway, I know what grey is."
sjuu This is a mark of slight exasperation.
asuy : tesarave Exasperated by the contradiction, she says "huh! boys!" while equally exasperated, he says asuy : nimarave "huh! girls!"
Querannaran sentences are basically OSV in structure and are prefaced by one or more pre-sentential evidential markers which help set the mood of what follows. Verbs in Querannaran conjugate primarily for aspect and mood; nouns decline for number and case and also conjugate for tense. In the exchange above, none of the nouns are conjugated for tense because the context of the conversation determines that it is a present tense raca being discussed. (A raca is an article of clothing, a long piece of cloth wrapped around the waist and tied up with a cord or fixed with a belt.)
Here it will help to understand that Daine (and Turgun) males can see the world with a kind of palette of sepia to grey tones with some darker reds. Females can see many hues and shades of color, so her obviously blue raca will bee seen by him as kind of dark grey.
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